Fun with Engrish

For those of you who don’t know, Engrish is the poor-quality English often encountered in Asia. Having recently traveled to Asia I now have some personal experience with Engrish that I would like to share with you.

In today’s episode we are going to take a look at the Crunky chocolate bar, whose wrapped I have thoughtfully scanned for you here:

Manufactured by Lotte (whose US site can be found here and Korean site (in English) can be found here) the Crunky bar is roughly equivalent to our Nestle Crunch bar here in the States. It is a thin chocolate bar with a layer of crunchy puffed rice on the bottom. All in all not too bad of a little candy bar, though a bit small for the going price of 50 cents.

Now some of you might be wondering why I find the Crunky bar a bit of Engrish worth sharing. For the answer to this I will have to point you to this definition from UrbanDictionary.com:

its a mixture of the word crazy and drunk

They have other definitions there on the site that go a bit more into detail about the origins of the word crunk, however this definition will suffice. Until I was researching this ‘article’ I was not clear on what the word crunk meant. I was passingly familiar with it from the title of a couple of rap albums from Lil’ Jon (YEEEAAAAHHH!) and the East Side Boyz and from one or two other songs, however its use was always a little ambiguous. When I did a search for the lyric on the Sing365.com I found over 450 hits for the word Crunk. I was going to post a few examples of usage and make a joke about a Crunky bar and Pimp Juice being the ideal way to start a night before heading out to the clubs, however I just stumbled across this song and, well, now I am just angry:

Rollin’ (The Ballad of Big & Rich)

Brothers and sisters
We are here for one reason
And one reason alone
To share our love of music
I present to you
Country music without prejudice, hey

Country boys don't rock and roll
Yeah the record man told me so
You'll never get it on the radio
Why they trying to complicate
The simple music that we make
Oh cause if it moves my soul
I'm gonna keep on rollin, rollin

Hey, just wanna hear everybody sing (rollin', rollin')
At the top of your lungs till the windows break (rollin', rollin')
Say hey, hey, hey

I ain't gonna shut my mouth
Don't mind if I stand out in a crowd
Just wanna live out loud
Well I know there's got to be
A few hundred million more like me
Just trying to keep it free

Hey, just wanna hear everybody sing (rollin', rollin')
At the top of your lungs till the windows break (rollin', rollin')
Say hey, hey, hey

Charlie Pride was the man in black
Rock and roll use to be about Johnny Cash
Hey, whatcha think about that?
Well I'm a crazy son-of -a-(bad word)
But I know I'm gonna make it big and rich
Yeah im gonna let it rip

Hey, just wanna hear everybody sing (rollin', rollin')
At the top of your lungs till the windows break (rollin', rollin')
Say hey, Cowboy Troy

[Cowboy Troy]
Dum-diggity-dum, diggity-diggity-dum dig this
Slicker than the grease from a BBQ Briskit
Got more chunk than a fresh potato salad
You thought you had your answer
But your answer was invalid
You're looking at me crazy cause you think I'm loco
The big black cowboy, with the crazy vocal
Todas las personas gritando arriva
Now you heard it, now I know you a believer
Esta cancion es para toda la gente
Es muy importante a usar su mente
So let go of all your preconcieved notions
Get up on your feet and put your body in motion
'Cause back home we love to dance
We could be two-steppin, or ravin' to trance
And when the party is CRUNK, the girls back it up
We got the systems in the cars and the 20's on the trucks
6-foot-four with a cowboy hat
I don't mess around, yo, what's up with that?
I'm Cowboy Troy, a Texas hick
And I'm rollin with the brothers
Big and Rich

Go cowboy, go, cowboy, go
(Go cowboy, go, cowboy, go)
Go cowboy, go, cowboy, go
(Go cowboy, go, cowboy, go)

Hey, just wanna hear everybody sing (rollin', rollin')
At the top of your lungs till the windows break (rollin', rollin')
Say hey, hey, hey

Hey, just wanna hear everybody sing (rollin', rollin')
At the top of your lungs till the windows break (rollin', rollin')
Say hey, hey, hey

Yes, that’s right, Big & Rich of “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” fame. You know, because the one-two combo of Kid Rock and Uncle Kracker (spelled with two K's because three would be too obvious) wasn’t bad enough. Damn them.

Those of you needing more Engrish fun can check out Engrish.com.

In other news I am working on getting all 1000+ pictures I took in Korea uploaded to my Webshots account. As soon as I get that done, which should be in the next day or so, I will post a brief overview here and hopefully, by the end of the month, have a Best of album put together on Webshots to save you the agony of culling through all the pictures. Then I have to deal with the 900+ pictures I shot at the airshow on Sunday. Saturday was a debacle that I don’t want to talk about.

Oh yeah, and Charlie uploaded a bunch of pictures someone took while he an May were getting their professional wedding portaits done to his Webshots album (you can view the specific album here.) Aren't they such a cute couple? Gag.